In this chapter, we will examine earlier overt ideological connections between language and identity and engage in more speculative theorizing about what the more recent variations might be. During Japan’s modern period the language (often confused with the writing system) has func- tioned as a marker of shifting cultural identity. Contrasting views on how the language should develop sparked heated and often bitter debate dur- ing the twentieth century as the evolving demands of history placed a new importance on the role of language in modernization and in Japan’s interface with the world. I will discuss the major views put forward on the role of Japan’s language in the construction of a particular cultural identity relative to the circumstances of the time, up to and including the present.
Personal and national identity in a modernizing Japan To go back to the very beginning of Japan’s modern period in 1868, the language practices then in use would have clearly identified someone in terms of class and location. As we saw in ChapterOne, the pre-modern division of Japan into multiple closed-off domains meant a highly seg- mented society and a complicated network of regional dialects. Dialectal variations could be extreme: the dialects of Kagoshima in the south and Sendai in the north-east, for example, were mutually unintelligi- ble (Hattori1960: 733). None of the dialects, even that of Kyoto or Edo, was officially designated as the standard language; that would not hap- pen until 1916, although in practice these functioned as lingua franca for those able to travel. Within each domain, of course, the local dialect was that region’s standard, used for the normal purposes of communication between residents who were unlikely, given the restrictions on travel, to have occasion to communicate with speakers of other dialects from dif- ferent regions. Any Japanese, therefore, would be identifiable in terms of region by the dialect they spoke.
In terms of written Japanese, identity in terms of social class was strongly marked by the system of writing then in use. Not only orthogra- phy but stylistic genres as well indicated whether the user was a member of the educated elite. During the pre-modern period, “educated” meant the upper classes, aristocrats and samurai, who were the only ones for whom education was officially provided in the form of domain schools at which students were drilled in the Chinese classics and the writing of innumerable characters. Those who were not members of the upper classes were not necessarily illiterate; far from it, self-education among townspeople and villagers flourished in the terakoya (temple schools), lending libraries did a roaring trade (see Kornicki1998) and Japan had a higher rate of literacy during the late pre-modern period than Europe. The growing influence of the merchant class in the eighteenth and nine- teenth centuries saw rapid growth in the number of private schools for the lower classes in both rural and urban areas, giving basic instruction in the three Rs along with moral and occupational training. Some com- moners acquired only the bare essentials of literacy; others developed an advanced ability to read and write, though usually only in certain areas.1 An upper-class educated man (and I use the word advisedly, rather than “person”) in the pre-modern period could be expected to have a familiarity with the Chinese classics, to be able to read and write kambun (Sino-Japanese) and s¯or¯obun (its epistolary equivalent) and in general to be familiar with the Japanese classics and their literary conventions as well. Writing (or at least the then prevailing idea of the written lan- guage of public life between educated men) was far from being an easy approximation of speech on paper; the several varieties of formal writ- ten Japanese adhered to classical traditions which resembled the spoken language only slightly. These varieties, or styles, are today collectively known as bungotai (literary styles based on classical forms), to differenti- ate them from k¯ogotai, the modern written colloquial style which is based on – though not entirely identical to – today’s spoken Japanese. Today’s k¯ogotai did not exist at the beginning of the modern period. It developed over time during the Meiji and subsequent periods, in response to the social changes during Japan’s modernization which meant that a demo- cratic written language was needed to replace the existing conventions which carried strong overtones of the power structure and values of the feudal period.
To understand the nature of written Japanese at the time and how it related to identity, we need to look briefly at the four major written con- ventions then in use: kambun (Sino-Japanese), s¯or¯obun (epistolary style), wabun (classical Japanese) and wakankonk¯obun (a style combining ele- ments of both Chinese and Japanese). Each of them, although necessarily
Language and national identity 41 having incorporated newer lexical items over the centuries, relied heavily on the use of archaic literary conventions and idioms: kambun and s¯or¯obun on classical Chinese and wabun on classical Japanese. Wakankonk¯obun, while it combined both these traditions, did so with a heavy admixture of contemporary elements which made it less arcane (for details, examples and history of the development of each of these four styles, see Twine
1991a).
Sino-Japanese was the form of writing used in official documents, crit- icism and exposition, history and critical essays, early Meiji translations of western literature and in general in upper class education. The term kambun (literally “Chinese writing,” denoting the Chinese language as used in Japan), actually encompasses several different types of Chinese or Chinese-influenced writing in Japan, including jun kambun (pure Chinese, or a Japanese attempt at writing Chinese as a foreign lan- guage using Chinese word order2) and kambun kundoku (Chinese read as Japanese with the help of diacritics and glosses to indicate word order and pronunciation, or written out in full as Japanese with a combination of Chinese characters and Japanese phonetic katakana).
We may wonder why Chinese should have played such an influential role in written Japanese, until we realize that in the sixth century, Japan, having no writing system of its own, adopted the Chinese writing system along with Buddhism during a period of extensive cultural borrowing. Chinese was originally written as a foreign language in Japan. Over time, however, systems such as the phonetic kana scripts were derived from the Chinese characters to indicate both those features of Japanese grammar not present in Chinese and the Japanese pronunciation of the words which the characters represented. It might have seemed only natural that the role of Chinese would diminish once the Japanese had developed writing systems of their own, but this did not happen. The use of Chinese or one of its derivatives signified erudition and prestige. As such, men chose to continue writing in that vein, and kana writing based on classical Japanese speech was left to women. Kambun, valued for its conciseness and formal erudite tone, enjoyed a prestige higher than that accorded to other forms of writing right up until and into the Meiji Period, bolstered along the way by the Tokugawa Shogunate’s revival of Confucian studies.
S¯or¯obun used the verb s¯or¯o as its copula. Men used this as their epis- tolary style in both public and private correspondence. Unlike kambun, which remained the province of the upper class, s¯or¯obun – descended from a modified form of classical Chinese developed in the Middle Ages in Japan – was used by commoners as well in correspondence, records and public notices. Commoner education included classes in s¯or¯obun, despite the fact that its marked Chinese influence made it quite difficult to master.
Originally written in Chinese characters alone, by the beginning of the Meiji Period it had evolved into a mixture of characters and katakana.
Wabun, on the other hand, was not Chinese-derived but rather descended from the court literature of the Heian Period (794–1192). Once kana scripts had been developed by the ninth century, it became possible for the literate few to write down Japanese in a manner approx- imating the way it was spoken. As we have seen, however, the prestige script of Chinese remained the one used by men, and kana were known as onnade, women’s writing. Court ladies used kana to write the great early classics of Japanese literature, among them The Tale of Genji, which is known as the world’s first novel. The soft elegance inherited from Japanese poetry lent to wabun a preference for graceful circumlocution and euphemism, with long meandering sentences very different from the brevity of kambun, lexicon drawn predominantly from native Japanese words and a marked preference for the use of such rhetorical devices as pivot words.3 Honorifics, rare in kambun, were abundant in wabun. In the early Meiji Period, wabun was used by women in correspondence, men in correspondence to women or near relatives, court ladies in the diaries which had been traditionally kept since the days of The Tale of Genji, essays by neo-classical scholars and some translations.
The fourth major literary style, wakankonk¯obun, was essentially kambun kundoku made softer by a mixture of classical Japanese; it also incor- porated colloquialisms from the eleventh century on. This became the major general-purpose literary style outside those areas in which kambun, s¯or¯obun and wabun were mandated. Its uses were many and varied: Buddhist sermons, plays, fairytales, ballad-dramas, certain genres of Tokugawa Period fiction, the dialogue passages in popular novels, prose poems and essays. Its grammar was still that of a past age and its nucleus was Chinese, but the familiarity imparted by the use of Japanese expres- sions made it popular with the many literate townsmen of the Tokugawa Period.
Going back to our theme of identity, then, both the variant of spoken language a person used and their degree of literacy and knowledge of the above literary conventions would have functioned to identify what part of Japan that person came from and whether the degree of education they possessed stamped them as upper or lower class. That was about to change, however, as the Meiji Period wore on, bringing a swift and all-encompassing transition from old to new. In quick succession came a national postal system (1871), a national education system (1872) and a modern communications network featuring, rail, telegraph and tele- phone networks. After 1870, the publication of newspapers and journals
Language and national identity 43 mushroomed. The lifting of the earlier restrictions on travel and choice of occupation led to a new freedom of social interaction and mobility. At national, community and personal levels, life changed on a scale not previously experienced.
The changes in language over this period reflected what was happening in society at large. A written language predicated on classical conventions and on notions of class made redundant by the sudden abolition of the previous four-tier class system4 now inevitably came under scrutiny in terms of whether it helped or hindered the modernization process. What was needed was a new written style based on modern speech which every- one could read and write and which was based on a standard language taught and used throughout the country. The orthography needed to be overhauled: kana spellings based on the speech of the classical era5still in use needed to be replaced with a streamlined system of kana spelling reflecting modern speech, and a limit needed to be placed on the number of Chinese characters to be used and to be taught in schools for daily use. Advocates of language reform argued that these changes would simplify the education system by reducing the time needed to learn to read and write, would facilitate full literacy and would result in a language able to be more or less uniformly spoken and written throughout Japan.
Although this may seem like good common sense from our present historical perspective, it was not an uncontested position. In fact, with the possible exception of the standard language, these reforms were bit- terly fought. Colloquial Japanese had long been considered too vulgar and wordy to be used in writing, except where the dialogue of popular fiction demanded it. To suggest that a modern written style be based on contemporary speech was viewed as an affront to centuries of belief that kambun and wabun and their derivatives were the only forms of writing possible for educated people of refined sensibilities. To suggest that the existing orthography be rationalized was tantamount to rejecting cen- turies of literary and cultural tradition. Language, in short, was a sacred cultural icon which embodied all that was good and true in the worldview of those keen to retain the status quo. Because those who reacted in this way were to a large extent those in power, it was a long time before any serious consideration was given to the issue of language reform, although both script and style reform were debated from time to time in newspa- pers and journals during the latter part of the nineteenth century.
The major engine which drove the development of a modern written style during this period was the newly emerging modern Japanese novel. Because authors such as Futabatei Shimei (1864–1909), the writers of the later Naturalist school and the great anti-Naturalist writers dealt with the alienation and psychological trauma experienced by their characters in
the new Japan, it became imperative to develop a new way of writing flexi- ble and contemporary enough to properly express personal issues of iden- tity and change. Futabatei’s Ukigumo (The Drifting Cloud, 1887–1889) is generally regarded as Japan’s first major modern novel, both because Futabatei, under the influence of Russian literary theory, used new tech- niques of psychological realism in depicting the main character’s inner turmoil and because in order to do so he pioneered the use of the Tokyo dialect in his text, on the grounds that the character’s thoughts could only be realistically conveyed in the language used in his everyday life. Later authors such as Yamada Bimy ¯o (1868–1910), Shimazaki T ¯oson (1872– 1943) and others, through successive waves of literary endeavor, devel- oped and polished the style further, until in the works of the Shirakaba group of authors in the years around 1920 the modern colloquial style reached perfection as a literary medium which from then on held unchal- lenged sway in the novel. Outside literary circles, and spurred on by their revelation that it was in fact possible to create a polished written style based on speech, progress in simplifying the language used in textbooks had been made by 1910; newspapers veered away from the traditional styles in the 1920s; and finally, the 1940s saw colloquial style being used in official documents and government decrees.
We can see from this string of developments that the relatively static relationship between language and identity that pertained in 1868 began to shift and change during the ensuing decades as former social struc- tures were broken down and new ways of doing things emerged. Language became important to the identity of the new “modern” Japanese in sev- eral ways, marking him/her as a citizen of an emerging modern nation state where one language acted as a unifying force understood (in theory, at least) by all citizens and where the kind of written language that a cit- izen should be exposed to in the press and use in his/her daily life was coming increasingly under scrutiny. At the macro level, concepts of per- sonal identity in relation to language remained fluid during this period, under tension from opposing views of how language should function and what it should represent. Just as the structures of the past were changing, so too, though at a much slower rate, were mindsets about speech and writing.
Personal identity was soon to be linked with national identity through the medium of language. In the 1890s, following Japan’s victory over China in the Sino-Japanese war (1894–1895), nationalistic sentiment led to a new interest in language issues. Prominent among those engaged in the debate at this time was Ueda Kazutoshi, whom we first met in ChapterOne. Ueda had just returned to Japan from his studies of west- ern linguistics in Germany. He was very much influenced by the western
Language and national identity 45 view of writing as secondary to speech and therefore a perfectible resource rather than a sacred icon which must not be tampered with. As linguis- tics lecturer at Tokyo Imperial University and later head of the Education Ministry’s Special Education Bureau, he threw his energies into lobbying the government to establish a body to research and oversee the implemen- tation of a standardized form of written Japanese based on the contem- porary spoken language, as we saw in ChapterOne. What motivated him more than anything else was the connection he saw between national iden- tity and the treatment of language. The Japanese language, he asserted, could be greatly improved by the adoption of a standard form of the language and of the colloquial style in writing. Ueda did not view this as tampering with tradition or destroying a respected cultural icon; far from it, to refine the national language – which he described as the spir- itual blood binding Japan’s people together – was to treat it with respect. Japanese, as the identifying mark of the state and of its people, must be respected and protected, not through allowing it to stagnate but through modification appropriate to the circumstances (Ueda1894). A standard language and a modern written style were, in his view, interdependent; both were essential to the future development of language in modern Japan.
We have seen some of the ways in which language related to shift- ing and fluid views of identity in mainland Japan during this period of sudden change. Identity issues for the Ainu and Okinawan populations were of course much greater. Dragooned into service as “Japanese” for the purposes of establishing the geographical borders of the nation state, they were assimilated to the point of being unable to receive education in their own languages. For these sections of Japanese society, identity as a Japanese citizen equated to erasure of personal identity through the most intimate identity marker of all: their own language.
Language issues in the Meiji Period, then, functioned as a symbol of modernized Japan: as a marker of personal identity and later also of iden- tity as a national subject. Not everyone viewed either of these in the same way, however; most of those in power or positions of influence rejected the idea of manipulated language change. The calls for script reform that began to surface in the 1870s and 1880s6 were opposed just as vehe- mently as the development of a modern written style. Chinese characters had formed the basis of written Japanese since the sixth century. Over